There’s an old joke about the fellow who has his left foot in a bucket of ice water and the right in a bucket of hot water, so that his overall temperature is average. That seems to apply to the climate during 2022’s northern summer of extremes: Overall, the planet was tied for only the fifth-warmest June-August, yet regional heat waves shattered records.
Global warming is undoubtedly a factor, but just how the increasing extremes that marked the summer of 2022 – heat waves, droughts and floods, sometimes one on top of the other – are related can be bewildering to the public and policymakers.
